MAN ARRESTED FOR HARASSING A DEAD OFFICER

A Tennessee man, presumably disenchanted with local law enforcement, posted the above image to social media. The image shows two people urinating on a headstone crudely edited to include a portrait of Sgt Daniel Baker, a Dickson County cop who was killed in the line of duty in 2018. The original photograph is the cover of a 2009 album released by a band called The Rites.

Dickson County police, however, believed it was a genuine photo of Baker's grave. With the assistance of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation—and a trip to the cemetery—they realized that it was merely a "tasteless and disrespectful photoshop".

Even so, they tracked Joshua Andrew Garton down anyway and charged him with Harassment over what the TBI described as "desecration" in a Twitter posting announcing his arrest. Garton is being held on a $76,000 bond at Dickson County Jail.

Garton's arrest may satisfy local outrage, but comes with its own costs. The heavy-handed response has already been widely condemned as an infringement of Garton's constitutional rights.

When it comes to First Amendment free speech, the First Amendment really was designed to protect a debate at the fringes. You don't need the courts to protect speech that everybody agrees with, because that speech will be tolerated. You need a First Amendment to protect speech that people regard as intolerable or outrageous or offensive — because that is when the majority will wield its power to censor or suppress, and we have a First Amendment to prevent the government from doing that.

Tennessee attorney Daniel A. Horwitz, who specializes in First Amendment litigation noted, the specific conduct the TBI arrested Garton for is simply “not a crime.”

“The First Amendment clearly and unmistakably protects this man’s right to post an offensive photo about a police officer,” Horwitz told Law&Crime.

“The only people who broke the law here were the police officers and TBI agents who participated in this flagrantly unconstitutional arrest.”-Daniel A. Horwitz

"The Police set out to arrest Joshua Andrew Garton for one thing, quickly realize they can't, and made up something else in frustration," wrote lawyer Daniel A. Horwitz on Twitter. "… I am riled up about the government imprisoning someone for disrespecting them."

Now this whole situation is also an example of the Streisand Effect, when is an attempt at censorship that results only in broad attention to the material in question. Thanks to the arrest, an image seen by only a few locals has now gone viral online.

UPDATE: Investigative efforts, by TBI and the Dickson Police Department today, have led to a Harassment charge for a man accused of doctoring and posting a disturbing photograph depicting the desicration of the grave of Sgt. Daniel Baker.

DETAILS: https://t.co/2qQHqgNfom pic.twitter.com/cuXc67kcfj
— Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (@TBInvestigation) January 23, 2021